Parshas Vayeishev - Yosef and His Brothers
מיכאל ריטש
Free choice and growth
Last week we discussed the words of the Ramchal דרשינן צדיקים לשבח ורשעים לגנאי: we do favorable drashos for tzaddikim, and unfavorable ones for reshaim. I suggested that we go after the end product and the future result - see there, I wrote at length.
Since Esav became a rasha as the final result, that is our approach to him and his actions.
One consequence: though we may have questions on how Yaakov was allowed to trick his father, it doesn’t really bother us at all how he could do that to Esav his wicked brother - we don’t like him.
On the other hand, everyone has problems with the story of Yosef Hatzaddik and his brothers. How is it conceivable that they could be so mistaken about him, think him a rasha and a rodeif (an attacker), and try to harm him?
And in the other direction: when the brothers came before Yosef to buy grain, how could he have tricked them and frightened them? Was he taking revenge?
How can tzaddikim do these things to other tzaddikim?
In Hashem’s management and hashgacha over the world there is a side (בחינה) of complete knowledge. From this point of view, there is no difference at all between the past and the future. Many of the drashos of Chazal work with this side of things, as I wrote before. Everything looks inevitable: this one is a tzaddik, that one a rasha.
But another aspect exists as well, also true: the side of bechirah and free choice. This is actually the side of things that is in front of our eyes constantly. As the Rambam testifies in Hilchos Teshuva, we always have the choice to choose good or its opposite, to be a tzaddik like Moshe Rabbeinu or a rasha like Yeravam ben Navat.
When working with this second side of reality, we should not approach events in the Torah using those drashos that work with the first side. We have to read the events as they occurred, not according to the final result. There is always the possibility of success or failure.
See what the Torah is presenting in our story: an opportunity to watch how saintly individuals developed. Modern books about tzaddikim usually cannot show this; they are written by students, and tend to see the tzaddik as full-grown. "From the time he was five he already knew the gemara by heart. From his youth, he was never known to complain..." The Torah is different. We watch these tzaddikim grow up, under tremendous pressure, failing and rising again - until they reach full growth and reconciliation. On the way, they had as much free will as any human being.
With this in hand, we are ready to approach the story of Yosef and his brothers. I’ll begin the story with this parsha, but it may take us a couple of weeks to reach results.
Not a normal family
When we write about the שבטי קה, the sons of the Avos Hakedoshim, we know that we are discussing some of the greatest tzaddikim that our nation has ever produced. But these parshiyos can be incredibly confusing and difficult to grasp. I’m going to try to discuss these great people, but I think that I have no choice but to begin in a very harsh direction. This direction is one that non-religious readers of the Torah see very easily, but that מאמינים בני מאמנים often tend to miss.
I’ll be as clear as I can: The problem with these parshiyos is not that we have trouble seeing how the shevatim were far greater than we are. The problem is that we have trouble seeing how they weren’t much worse. The things they did do not seem to be normal stress and strife or regular sibling rivalry. How many families do we know where brothers do these kinds of things to each other? Only ones in jail. No one that we could respect.
I’m being very harsh, but I want to get this straight.
What are we missing here? One essential factor, which makes all the difference in understanding them. Think about what it is like to be a member of a royal family. In such a family, strife over the accession is the rule, not the exception. Very often whoever becomes king kills his own relatives and their families to protect his position. For royal families, this is (unfortunately) normal; people in the family know that their relative positions are matters of life and death. Even King David's family was not in any way immune.
The narrative of the Torah makes it clear that this particular family had been assigned a unique status. The heads of the family were prophets of G-d, and were promised a special relationship with Hashem and growth into a great nation. They lived their lives with a enormous perception of destiny: they were building the central framework for the future of humanity. A royal family indeed.
Throughout B'reishis this potential destiny exerts incredible pressure, warps and twists the people involved, turns brother against brother and against father - from Kain and Hevel through Shem, Cham, and Yefes, and Yitzchak and Yishmael. B'reishis cannot end until it has developed brothers who can accept their roles without jealousy, like Peretz and Zerach, Efraim and Menashe. And Sh'mos will begin with Moshe and his brother Aharon, who sees his brother's elevation over him with "joy in his heart".
The brothers’ fears, and their efforts
Yehudah and his brothers saw that their father had a tremendous special love for their younger brother Yosef. Of them all, only Yosef was the "ben z'kunim". Our sages say (among other things) that that meant that he was a reflection of his father. The sh’vatim were sons of Patriarchs, but Yosef was something like a Patriarch himself: He alone fathered [two] tribes. He was able to received his father's wisdom more than the others, and his father recognized it.
He received prophetic dreams of his superiority. I don't know that he repeated them in a mean way; it could be he thought that he was supposed to. But they felt themselves deeply threatened, in grave danger. Right before the brothers' eyes was the example of their uncle Esav. He had been outclassed by their father Yaakov, demoted, and eventually cast off entirely. By now he was no longer part of the family, or the inheritence of G-d.
All of this was terrifying to Yosef’s brothers. They weren’t like Esav; being left out of that made their lives not worth living. They felt as if Yosef was threatening their very existence.
That doesn’t mean they did the right thing! On the contrary, what they did was exactly wrong. A frequent theme in the Torah: Someone tries to control events by doing the wrong thing - he brings about exactly what he feared. We see this with Kain, with the generation of the Dispersion, with Yishmael.
Sometimes a person has to trust in Hashem and his hashgacha, and not try to force the situation to his will, “to climb over the wall”. Sometimes Hashem has not given the person a permissible way to do hishtadlus. He has to accept Hashem’s choices, and trust in him; that’s how he can succeed.
In our story, if the brothers felt that they were threatened by Yosef, in danger of losing their share in Hashem and his nation, the threat was in the world of Hashem’s hashgacha. Yosef might be found worthy and not them? - For that kind of threat, their efforts could only be in that same realm. They could pray, study Torah, or grow in service and fear of G-d, so that they would also be found worthy. “Jealousy of sages increases wisdom.”
The brothers did not do that. They foolishly did the opposite, trying to force the issue and remove their perceived problem.
In the Torah, that never works. By trying to safeguard their position, the brothers came within a hairs-breadth of losing it entirely. They were taking steps to get themselves expelled from the family in disgrace.
Yehuda and Tamar
After Yosef’s sale, the brothers distanced Yehudah: לח(א) וירד יהודה מאת אחיו - “Yehudah went down from his brothers.” (Rashi: His brothers lowered him from their leadership when they saw the suffering of their father...) Instead, Yehudah became friends with a non-Jew, and married a Canaanite's daughter (see Rashi, Ramban, and Ibn Ezra). He was ח"ו following the route that Esav had taken, the route that led away from the family.
And his sons began to die.
Boruch Hashem, Yehudah did not continue on this route to oblivion. A good woman saved him.
The words of Chazal are well-known: A good woman can help her husband to be good. A bad woman can do the opposite too ח"ו: There is no place in the Torah that shows Esav’s descent more clearly than when he married Canaanite wives, and joined with their cursed line. This is written in the Torah just before Yaakov was able to take the brachos. And immediately after the brachos as well, the Torah says that Esav went to marry the daughter of Yishmael - but didn’t divorce the first wives (Rashi).
In Parshas Ki Seitzei, I’ve written at length about yibum. Yibum changes the judgment of the family from death to life, from failure to success. The good woman saves her husband and the family that they were trying to build.
The story of Tamar is found right after Yehuda’s greatest failure: the sale of Yosef. But she accomplished yibum and saved Yehudah’s family. This was the beginning of Yehudah’s redemption of himself and his brothers from their sin.
לח(יח) ויאמר מה הערבון אשר אתן־לך ותאמר חתמך ופתילך ומטך אשר בידך כו‘.
38(18) “Yehudah says to Tamar, ‘What collateral shall I give you?’ She answered, ‘Your seal and your string and the staff in your hand...’ ” Chazal say that he gave her kiddushin, married her.
Rashi: “Seal - the signet ring that you sign with. Your string - your special garment.” [See the Ramban and Gur Arye who understand that Rashi may hold that “string” refers to ציצית.]
Ba’al Haturim: “Your staff... this staff that he gave into her hand was the staff that was used to smite the Nile and do all the miracles in Egypt. Your string - פתילך is the same letters as תפילך, your tefillin.”
No ordinary mashkon: Yehudah gave to her objects of incredible importance, worth infinitely more than the goat he’d promised. These objects contained the symbols of his greatness, of the kingship that was his destiny. And he married Tamar, making her a part of his destiny as well.
Afterward, he wanted to redeem the objects. Nothing doing: she fled, still connected to him.
(כג) ויאמר יהודה תקח־לה פן נהיה לבוז כו‘.
“Yehudah said, ‘Let her take them, let we be humiliated...”
Still making wrong choices: Yehudah would give up everything great, just that he should not suffer shame - for a situation of his own causing.
She was being taken out for execution, and she still didn’t want to embarrass him. He needed to accept the consequences of his own free will, or there would not be any permanence to what she had accomplished. She left the choice to him. This time she succeeded; he accepted responsibility, did teshuvah and confessed in public.
And because he accepted a loss of honor, he was zocheh to the honor of kingship. [See the gemara in Sotah 10b for all his reward for what he did here.]
With this, Tamar also prepared Yehudah for what he would need to do with Yosef. Chazal say (Bava Kamma 86a) that a slave has no din of בשת, embarrassment. (That is, there is no humiliation greater than the very fact of being a slave.) And since Yehudah had sold Yosef to be a slave, in the end he also would need, מדה כנגד מדה - measure for measure, to give himself over to the humiliation of being a slave.
Continued next week, בס"ד.